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CLP Holdings Limited

CLP Holdings is one of the largest investor-owned power businesses in the Asia-Pacific region. Incorporated in Hong Kong in 1901 as China Light & Power Company Syndicate, through CLP Power Hong Kong, the group operates a fully-integrated electricity generation, transmission and distribution business supplying 80% of Hong Kong’s population.

Outside Hong Kong, CLP holds investments in the energy sector in Mainland China, Australia, India and Southeast Asia. Its diversified portfolio of power generation assets uses a wide range of fuels including coal, gas, nuclear and renewable sources. Its clean energy portfolio, which accounts for over 18% of the total equity capacity at end-2011, includes hydro-electric, solar, wind and biomass plants. The company is the largest external investor in the Mainland’s renewable energy sector and the largest investor, foreign or domestic, in India’s wind sector. In Australia, its wholly-owned subsidiary TRUenergy is one of the largest integrated energy companies providing gas and electricity to over 2.8 million customers.

Powering Asia Responsibly encapsulates the company’s belief that a sustainable business is one that lasts for hundreds of years. Within this context, the company strives to produce a reliable and quality product that society values, and to deliver long-term economic value to capital providers while meeting stakeholders’ expectations on social and environmental responsibility. It is committed to integrating socially and environmentally sound practices in its business.

CLP published its first environmental report, entitled Environmental, Health and Safety Review, in 1997. The company issued its first Social and Environmental Report in February 2003, which was published annually until the Sustainability Report replaced it in 2008. Its independently-verified Sustainability Report provides a range of information that spans from major stakeholder engagement activities to safety and environmental performance, such as emissions, waste and water discharged. Its 2010 Sustainability Report won the Globe Award for Sustainability Reporting, a coveted international award initiated by the Globe Forum. In 2011, CLP adopted the International Integrated Report Council’s framework on corporate reporting and incorporated the social and environmental aspects of its business into its Annual Report.

The company’s successful performance is evident in the 13% increase in operating earnings for 2011 while maintaining a carbon intensity of 0.8kg CO2 per kilowatt-hour.

As a power company operating in a region where coal remains to be the fuel of choice for electricity generation, CLP’s challenge is to meet the rising demand for energy without a corresponding rise in carbon emissions. Climate Vision 2050 is the company’s response to that challenge.

Specifically, CLP is committed to reducing the carbon intensity of its generation portfolio by 75% to 0.2 kilograms of CO2 per kilowatt-hour by 2050. By the end of 2010, CLP met its first carbon-emission intensity reduction target of 0.8 kilograms of CO2 per kilowatt-hour and exceeded its 5% renewable energy target for 2010. This was achieved partly through a reduction in coal investment and partly through the expansion of the company’s wind portfolio in mainland China. Given its progress to date, the company upped its non-carbon-emitting generation target to 30% of its generation portfolio by 2020 and tightened its carbon intensity target to 0.6 kilograms of CO2 per kilowatt-hour by 2020.